Hello the Internet, and welcome to season two ninety six, episode one of Derdly's Guysay production of My Heart Radio. This is a podcast where we take a deep dive into america shared consciousness. And it is Tuesday, July eighteenth, twenty twenty three.
Oh yeah, very oh yeah, some great. It's it's Nelson Mandela International Day, the National Sour Candy Day, World Listening Day, because you're doing that right now, National Tropical Fruit Day, and actually good topic or at least related to the top of we're talking about today, or at least tangentially. It's National caviard Day as well, so just imagine.
Yeah, sorry, I just have to act like I didn't know most celebrating to seem like a man of the people.
I had no dripping down your face.
So much caveat off. Have the seven layered dip that's just seven different types of caviare, dude.
But the good stuff in the bottom there, it's all premit precires.
To top claimed flesh. Huh. Well, my name is Jack O'Brien aka Barbenheimer, Girl, Destroyer of your WORDLDS melt like plastic, it's fantastic, louse your golden hair destruction everywhere. Radiation life ends by your creation. Barbenheimer, Lake of Fire. Oh oh yeah, Barbenheimer, Lake of Fire. Oh yeah uh. That is courtesy of Discorduroy on the Discord. M hmm, thank you, Michael, Barbara, and I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co host, mister Miles.
Gram Miles Gray.
Akay, in the gravy, you can up your podcast ease in the gravy. You can host mad bousies in the gravy. You can smoke mad please in the gravy.
Okay, shout out to me, because I still have Village people on the brain. Yeah. And you know what's wild, I didn't mention the when we're talking about it, Like half of their songs are like derivations of the hits. So like these other songs I'd never heard of had like almost sad like nearly the same structure and like key changes or like three choruses were in your mind. You're like, wait, hold on, this is my show man, and you're like, oh, no, it's not. They're saying something
completely different. Anyway, shout out them.
Yeah, I got to give a shout out to Zeke Gangage's listener smooth Lou, I believe is the name smooth Lou who solved the mystery? Did you see this on Twitter?
Wait?
What was it?
Grand Puba? It's a Grand Puba track from nineteen ninety five, I guess.
And did you go back and you checked it out?
Yeah?
Yeah, it's definitely that's the song.
Oh wait, wasn't it It's just a track called two thousand?
Yeah.
I don't know why it took us so long. I guess it like didn't didn't really hit that much?
Wow?
Wow wow, Yeah, check out that song. It's okay, kind of it's kind of good. I wow, stand to buy my reference two thousand?
Yeah, I still love it. Okay, the energy is still there. Wow, shout out hiking. Honestly, you guys, fucking between all of y'all, we don't need Google, and we could have googled it, but it was hard to just google two thousand song lyric really.
So Smooth Lou great, great Twitter handle, even better at saving my ass from making it seem like I was referencing a Billy Joel's song.
Yeah, Smooth Lou, we owe you a hamburger.
Yes, smooth Lou came through with that, said I got you fan, thanks for all you do. And then somebody else came through and vouch for smooth Lou. Was like, pretty cool, dude. I miss you, smooth Lous like forever so much. Love to Smooth Lou. Wow, this one goes out to you. All right, Miles, it's a special episode. We're talking labor.
I'm talking. I'm still blown away that smoothly put. I mean, did you hear it?
Yeah?
I started playing a little a second ago and I'm like this speaks Wow.
Yeah, big poopa head over here.
Yeah, damn all right, anyway, sorry, anyway, back to you Jack and back to you Miles. Yep, no, back to you, to you fam.
This episode we are no and I'm still gonna go back to you, pal. We're talking the writer strike, the actor strike, ultimately the labor movement in general. And researching this and reading about unions and hearing people talk about the history of Hollywood. I guess a thing that I knew but hadn't really thought that much about is that Hollywood is like one of the most consistently unionized industries left in this country.
Like yeah, then with that kind of visibility, yeah, yeah.
When I think union's like I think, you know, guys on Dog like Jimmy Hoffa, you know.
In the National Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
Yeah, exactly. You don't think about Hollywood. You don't think about the glitz and glamb. But I also spend a lot of time just thinking about I don't know, you know, I'm a movie guy. I think the movies are just all right.
Yeah, like it gave us Star Wars, it gave us Jaws, it gave us some other movies probably, But I.
Just when you look at the the history of the industry, like across the one hundred years that it has been unionized, like it's it's a pretty it's hit some pretty high highs, like an entertainment industry.
Yeah.
For some reason, I kept thinking about this time I went over to Ireland, like in the early two thousands. I know, and I know I always talk about it. I always talk about the cuisine, brag about the cuisine. But everybody. First of all, the only thing on TV was The Simpsons, which, thank you, that was wonderful. I
will take that. And also the Rachel like I'd say forty percent of the girls were rocking the Rachel from Friends, Like just the the level of like Hollywood's influence is you know, can't be overstated, especially like what's that.
No I said? I mean, it's I mean. And also you kind of date everyone had the Rachel back then. Yeah, how old are you then?
I was twenty like I was twenty one, I was like seven years old.
Oh but I guess so too, Like Europe also had that delay of like American trends hitting about like four years later.
For sure, exactly, but just I don't know, Like we talked a lot of shit about movies and TV, but like across just viewing the body of work across like it has created a great deal of iconic lasting art that like breaks through to the mainstream. And I think, I think you can draw like you would never hear these two things connected. But just in thinking about the history, like it it really is, we have that history because of unions, and we're going to talk about that a
little bit. And like just the fact that the creative people, the artists who drive the actual original creative ideas that like get turned into movies that like define generations, you know, like those people are protected by a union and when they're not, like you see, what we'll talk about what studios want to do with them what these streaming companies are trying to do with them. So it's a it's an interesting conversation that I think kind of stretches the
brain in a lot of different directions. And also you know, it's it's an important moment.
Oh yeah. And I mean I think, and we talked about this off mic before of like, you know, when else have you seen in like union members with the kind of visibility that the WGA or SAG does, right, you know, And I think there's a lot of attention on this obviously because of like the nature of the work that people do, but I think there's there's something that I'd imagine a lot of other industries are looking at to see how this has resolved, whether like they
you know, they go the cynical route like we've heard in like leaked quotes where they're like, yeah, wait till they start getting evicted and then they'll start you know, like we'll use the loss of housing as a negotiating tactic. Yeah, we'll see how cynical it goes, or if you know, I think I have a feeling that after these studios see just how devoid of talent and energy some of their like marketing things have been without the people that
you know, make the shit come to life. Yea that they may, they may come around, but hey, we shall see. And I think that's where we have a great.
I think we're also going to end up talking about we haven't had the conversation yet, We're about to have it. But yeah, I think we'll end up talking about AI because I think it's also revealing about just where their priorities are on the studio side, that that that the AI side is so important. Like yeah, I don't know if they're fooled by the chat GPT or if they think that the chat GPT is going to be good enough to fool audiences, but I.
Think they think it's like if they can just get that domino to fall, then all their problems are solved. They can reap all the benefits. But it like sounds like someone who's like trying to get like an English Lit PhD or something. He's like, we should be allowed to use spark notes in the exams, and whenever we'd like I'm being serious and they're like, no, I think you found a shortcut that's you need.
All right, Well we are thrilled to be joined by someone with a seat at the table during the liberations. Adam Conover. So we'll be right back with Adam. We'll be right back, and we're back, and we are thrilled to be joined in our third sea by a very friend of comedian, writer, executive producer, TV host and labor organizer who you know from Adam Ruins everything his podcast factually and being out in these streets picketing, acting as member of the negotiating committee, serving on the WGA West
Board of Directors. It's Adam Connor and it's love to be here.
Was that was all my credits? I have a lot of titles now having those things I'm not doing now because I'm on strike. I'm not a TV host right now.
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean that things nascent.
When it's all over, I'll be back on your screens, you know.
There you go, yes, yes, yes, Well thanks for joining us. I can't imagine this is a busy time for you at all.
Yeah.
I was just sounds like I got nothing going on.
I was just out on the street, you know, for for three four hours ninety degree heat with a sign, talking to people. It's a blast, man, it's I'm having so much fun out there. The solidarity feels so good. It's just it's great.
I love it.
Yeah, I mean people are making sacrifices, you know, but there's our political directors, wonderful woman Rachel Torres. She's brilliant. She told me, uh, you know, if you're smiling while you're sacrificing, if you're having a good time while you're making the sacrifice, then they can't beat you. And I think that that is really true.
Yeah, for sure, big cheerleader smiles out there on the Yeah, people, it's it's a party.
A guy brought a sound system to Netflix, and now he's playing like sort of mid tempo like dance music. You know. It feels like kind of that kind of that outdoor day club like pool club kind of people almost feel like they should be having frozen cocktails walking around like it's just the vibes are good. And then he's like remixed like people giving speeches like fran Dresser's speech.
Someone told me he like remixed one of my tiktoks into a song of like, you know, so you want to pick a line, line, line, line line, Yeah, and.
You sent him a takedown notice immediately, I'm yeah, better who signed off? But yeah, I mean we were talking with this feels like a huge moment for labor. These are you know, with the w g A some of the most influential, like union eye as union protected workers on the planet. But with with actors, with the Screen Actors Guild, you know, the.
Faces, the beauty, beauty and brains coming together, you know.
But yeah, I don't know, just kind of thinking about this, think about the history of labor and unions in Hollywood. It feels like Hollywood to this point. The fact that unions have been a presence in Hollywood for as long as they have. It's a great learning moment for why capitalism doesn't work without unions.
Basically, yeah, well it's an open question whether capitalism works at all, you know.
And I think you're arguing, yeah, like unions are the thing that keep people from being like, oh, Marx was definitely right, just right, right.
I mean, look, I sort of don't get into Marxism socialism. I don't do iss. I just know that the union and the union structure is the only way to fight back, right, and so you know, the union is a hammer, and I grabbed the hammer and I start smashing shit and it's really fun.
Yeah.
So, I mean, the only reason people even think of writing, acting, directing as being lucrative jobs. You know, like if you say, oh, my cousin's a actor in LA, you might be, oh, he's if he's working, he's making good money. Right, That's what an assumption is. That's only because we've had strong unions in this town for ninety years. The Writers School was founded ninety years ago, and it's only because those
unions went on strike. The last time the writers and actors went on strike together was nineteen sixty and in that negotiation, we won our health and pension plans, and we won the existence of residual payments, which are the payments we get every time the product is aired. Right, And that's why I have a health and pension today is because they went on strike. Then that's why I've gotten residuals to help tide me through the slow periods of my career is because of those and writers going
on strike. And so now it's our turn to do the same thing. And that's why we're out there.
Yeah. As a thought experiment, I was trying to think of, like, what do we think the last ninety years of movies and TV look like if the industries were never unionized.
YouTube looks on YouTube, Yeah, you know, people barely scraping by. Or it looks like I mean, look at Korea for instance, there was or the anime industry. Right, those are two extremely popular. You know, they make a lot of media that's consumed by a lot of people, and the people who make the media aren't able to make a living. There was a great piece in the La Times a couple of weeks ago about how the guy who created Squid Game. You know, they and Netflix trotted this guy's
story out as a hero story. You know, Oh, he tried to make the show for ten years and he couldn't make it until Netflix gave him a chance. They became a worldwide hit. Right, that guy made from the first season, which was a again worldwide smash like Game of Thrones level. You know, people watching it, he made two hundred thousand. Yeah, that's you know, that's a good living. Right.
That's not what you should get if you made the most popular show ever, right, And that's the guy who created the show, the people who worked on the shows, and the people who create you know, your more average K dramas right that you know, you know, I hear about one or two k K dramas or K comedies a year, but you know the ones that are a little further down the down the pipe, that that the real the real fans watch. Those people are literally not
making a living making television. They are writing those shows in between their day jobs, or they're working eighteen hour days and then when the show ends, they're just like, well, back to my day job. Right. And this this article. You can look up LA Times, you know, squid Game Korean. Google that and you'll find the article goes into really long detail on that. And the reason is there's no
unions and Netflix is exploiting that. I mean, they talk about Netflix came into that market and said, oh, we want to you know, spread Korean content around the world, right, and they created a lot of work, They created a lot of shows, but no one's being paid because the stand the work standards are so abysmal. It's sweatshop media. Unfortunately.
Yeah, yeah, I had no idea that that was the thing. I mean again, obviously because a lot of Koreat media is so good that I was like, oh, this is a natural progression of things, and then I remember, oh, Netflix is going in like but there was a moment I was like, oh, they're going in like to the point where I was like, oh, they might. They're really trying to put their foot down in Korea. I had no ideas because they're like, yeah, man, you can get away with anything over here.
Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, it's just like it's a car company, you know, moving to Mexico right, or to any other or you know Nike in Bangladesh, right, it's there. They are taking advantage of poor work standards to get the product a lot cheaper. And you know, why do the companies love anime? You know, it's awesome as an American you know, someone who grew up you know, trading VHS tapes of anime that it's like popular in the US now it's popular around the world. That's great.
But I mean, you guys know horrible conditions that anime has made it. I mean people, people die in that.
Industry, symptoms make jokes about it. I remember, and I was like, is that a joke or is that one of those Simpsons jokes? So they're like, no, no, no, that's real.
It's awful. It's awful. And that's one of the reasons they're pumping it out, is they is they feel that they can, you know, get more content for less dollars. Now. The thing about that, though, is that American American media is still the most popular valuable media in the world.
Right.
It's still what people want to watch, like from a big budget thing like Avatar too, right to you know, even you know, reruns of old sitcoms. Right, people are still watching Friends in Australia, you know, and Ireland, Yeah, and new shows as well. Right, that is what people want to watch more than anything else, both in America and around the world. And one of the reasons for that is because the entertainment industry has been the only place that paid creators fairly for the last hundred years.
You know, if you are a great writer and you want to make if you want to if you want to buy a big house of your writing, you know, where are you gonna go? Are you gonna work in journalism? Are you gonna work in novels? No, You're gonna go try to sell a big movie script. Right. That's been the pattern in Hollywood up until basically the early two thousands,
where you had the best writer. Literally, Faulkner and Fitzgerald came to Hollywood right to write movies and you know, think about, well they both drank themselves to death, but too much money. Yeah, but you know that was that was the way it worked. And the companies have broken that compact and as a result, the content is getting worse. Unfortunately. You know, we're entering this Marvel period where they're trying to you know, they saying, oh, the actor doesn't matter,
the writing doesn't matter. All that matters is Spider Man. People will go to see Spider Man no matter what, you know, no matter who's in the suit, no matter what he's saying. Right, And it's not actually true because you know, look at what happened with the Flash, right, they realize they can't just cram in superheroes and expect people to show up. But you know, all that that makes the CEOs think is they need to pump harder. They need to you know, get more blood out of
that stone. But so these companies are destroying the compact. And why did the compact work because of the unions. We had strong unions here that that you know, meant we had good working nditions that meant people wanted to move here to Los Angeles or to New York to make the content, and we're fighting to change that, to make it the way it should be.
I feel like The Flash is a good example of you know, the Flash recently came out. Indiana Jones recently came out and the primary complaint that you heard from them is creepy CGI, like terrible, weird CGI that take takes you out of it, and like effects are a frequent complaint, and you hear people like wonder why, like
how this happens on some of these movies. They spent three hundred million dollars in effects, and it's at least partially because the effects houses are not union, that is not a part of the industry that is protected, and so you have situations where the effects house that won the Oscar for Life of Pie is out of business by the time they get the award.
Yeah, you know, if you talk to I've talked to people who work at effects houses from Marvel, and they're treated terribly. You know, they're they're asked to do impossible things on impossible turnarounds that you know, well, we want we want it like this, No, we want it like this, you have to change everything, but we're not going to pay you more, and you have hal so much time
to do it. You know that kind of request. The people who work at these companies, you know that their careers last five years and then they burn out because they can't do it anymore. It's not like video games. And you know the proof is in the pudding. But also you know we're on we're in a new era of the special effects.
Right.
It used to be that the special effects, the CGI was there to impress and delight the audience. Right, Oh my god, look at the terminator and terminator too. Right, he's melting. He's the melting man. It's look how cool? Or toy story? Right, look how great it looks. Now they you it as a cost cutting device. They use it in order to they're like, oh, if we just like send it all to a VFX house that's not union and make them do all the work, it's a
lot cheaper. You know, if you look at the difference between look the new Mission Impossible, right, I saw it. Look it's not a good movie, but.
You don't think it's an accurate depiction of AI.
It is interesting that the villain is AI. Right, but the script is I don't want to get into it, right, but the action scenes, right, it's got these two incredible action sequences that are totally worth seeing in a theater. Had people hooting and hollering, great time. And why did
they work so well? Because they fucking happened in real life, because they put in the effort and the craft and the time to you know, go to the place and do the stunt and shoot the thing, or to build the set, or to buy the car, or to put the person in the place right. And for movies like The Flash, they're like, just have the guys stand in front of a green screen and will make some underpaid couple bosos. Yeah you know, sorry, they're not bosos. They're
great artists, but they're underpaid. They don't have enough time bring in terrible conditions. Yeah, so it's cut rate. It's sweatshop content, you know.
And about another lightning portal in the sky, what if we did so it was.
Coming out of portals and yeah, yeah there's portals. I'm as stuff.
Yeah, Adam, I got to ask though, right, like these costs they got to the studios, gotta cut costs because I've heard it straight from their mouths, times are tough. Oh yeah for studios. I heard Bobby Jay I'll say Igre in a very fancy way. Uh, you know, really be out here being like, you know, their their demands are unrealistic or other people. I've heard that. I've heard the thing over and over that times are hard for studios.
And we've talked a lot about this, where you know, Iger's pay was what approaching twenty seven million for the year, and like people like what David Zaslov almost be like a quarter of a billion dollars in twenty twenty one. Yeah, what how would you define from their perspective, It's that they're trying to inaccurately describe a problem that they maybe they have created through their own business decisions. Yeah.
I mean, that's a wonderful answer to your own question. That's a great way to put it. I mean, look, these guys are raking it in. And let's be really clear. So writer producer pay has fallen by twenty three percent at the median over the last ten years. That's the Writer's Guild's own figures. That's total pay. Over the same time, show budgets have gone up by fifty percent. Revenue has gone up, profits have gone up for these companies, just
their entertainment divisions. I'm not even talking about you know, Disney's got sports, They've got theme parks. We're not talking about that. We're just talking about literally the entertainment divisions of the companies. Revenue, profits, budgets all up while our salaries go down. At the same time, they're paying these companies,
these CEOs massive, massive amounts of money. I mean, Bob Iger when he made those comments, he had just negotiated for himself an additional two years and he's making an extra fifty million by a year. That guy doesn't fucking need that money. He's already incredibly wealthy if you look at the aggregate he's made over the last ten years.
How dare he go on television and plead poverty while the rest of us are not able to make a living, while his workforce is not able to make health insurance or you know, make a living anymore.
It's revolting, but it's line goes up shit right. It's the their answering to the Wall Street and for Wall Street, it's never enough, like when you have a good year, that that that you should keep being better years, Like that's what we want to consistently see that line also.
These But but it's not just that, because growth is growth is possible, right if you do you can do it the right way. You can pay everybody properly and make good shit that people actually like and make more money. That's my belief in life. And there's companies that fucking do it right. And also it's what the entertainment industry did. For a long time. A lot of people were paid shitty in the entertainment industry, you know, like the unions are the ones that you know that protected us pas.
We have always been paid shittily. There's a lot of bad shit in Hollywood. But like you know, from the eighties through the two thousands, everybody liked the product. Right, We had peak TV, right, everyone had cable, We were watching ads. We were fine with it. We could watch on demand or use DVR if we needed to. You know what I mean. Everything was people were making so much money. People were going to the movie theater. The content was good, you know, and the people who made
it were paid. And now what's happening. People don't like the product anymore. You know. The Netflix revolution was a lie. That they you know, the idea that you could pay fifteen dollars a month and never have to pay another penny and never watch an ad and watch every show ever made. They were lying to the public that that was possible. They destroyed a profitable business model in order to find a new one, but at the same time they kept enough of the money for themselves that the
people at the top are doing better. Well, everyone else does worse, But the companies would grow more if they if they did it the right way. Period.
Yeah, the Golden Age of TV is a great example of the WGA working because you know, like you mentioned, like the WGA, and like the things that the WGA has provided, like writers with like the ability to make a living during dry periods or whatever, like helps writers,
you know, remain writers. And a lot of the best TV is created by people with the long time experience in like past successful and unsuccessful TV shows like Breaking Bad is created by a former X Files writer, like there's a big break between these Sopranos comes from a writer on Northern Exposure, like Matthew Weiner cut his teeth on Becker and in Laws before he got on sopranos.
Sh Yeah, but like the you know on your episode where like where you were talking about the strike, you were talking to I think David Goodman, Yeah who and you know his family guy writer who all told a story about how he almost quit the industry but like a residual check for a show he wrote on in the past that he said like wasn't very good, but it got him through so that he could keep being
a writer. And there's just all this all this information that gets passed down, Like iveryget where I heard it, but somebody was saying that like the family tree of all of the Golden Age TV shows, it all like traces back to Colombo and like that show then like created all like all the writers on that became showrunners on other shows and it just like branched down. So
we magically have this period of Golden era TV. But like that doesn't happen if the television industry works the way like the industry that I think all three of us have a background in is like creating content for the Internet.
And yeah, like just the.
Way that we've seen that devolve over the past fifteen.
Years, it doesn't exist anymore.
It doesn't exist, Like there are no guardrails and there were no ways to, you know, like ensure good outcomes for the people that were contributing to that environment.
Yeah, because they the company has decided to pull them, sell them for part for parts, you know. I mean, look at look, I like I play video games, right, so I like reading video game websites. There's no such thing as video game websites anymore. I mean there's sites where people upload it for free, like YouTube right right, where people put in all the work and all the risk themselves of putting up work, and then you know, if you're lucky, you get paid by YouTube if you
happen to hit right right. But in terms of being somebody who's like a journalist who covers video games goes to E three interviews, people break stories right there literally are not outlets left that pay people to do this because they've been stripping them for parts. One of them that I read is Kotaku. I've read it for years. They're trying to replace those writers with AI. They're trying to like and like, what's what's the fucking point of that? Do they do? They think I'm gonna go to taku
dot com to read AI generated articles. I also have chat GPT I can just ask chat GPT if I want an AI answer, why are you hiring someone to copy paste from chat GPT? What the fuck is the point of that? Why destroy your own industry? People go because they like the people.
Right right, And I guess there's like that that's just like that disconnect we see like in every industry where again, there's like a motive to make sure that like you provide value to shareholders while completely like missing sight of like the actual products that are being made and like if consumers are gonna be savvy enough, because look, I love bullshit reality TV, but I like like actually well written television also, and I can already see like you
like just that that shift to MAX was like sort of like a preview of like the worlds we're looking at. It's like, well, remember HBO, there's that, and then there's just all this other unscripted nonsense that fucking also is really cheap to make, and like you know, kind of maybe where things should be going if writers and actors don't get off their shit.
Max is such an antithesis of the last you know of how you build a successful media company, right like HBO. There's a wonderful book about HBO. I read it this year called It's not TV, It's it's a history of HBO. From the beginning, what you realize HBO is like this, you know, starts out as just a cable company that you know, you pay extra and you can watch fights and stuff like that, right, right, and then they find this niche of oh, we can make content that doesn't
exist on broadcast. Right, we can make something that's edgy. We can da da da da, Right, and they build it on exactly dream on right, this show with a price to watch that because there was boobs in it, right. But you know, they did the Larry Sanders show, they did the Sopranos, right, and they sort of create prestige. TV is created by HBO to the point where you know, by by up to you know, three or four years ago.
You know, if a show comes out on HBO, you're like, I'm going to assume this show is good, right, because you know that their creative culture is HBO is putting their muscle behind that. It's got to be good. There's exceptions. There's stinkers, of course, yes, like like you know the
idol or whatever. But that's the it's the cathedral of television and people know that, right, And so when Netflix comes along and all these other channels starting their streamers, what would have been the easiest thing in the world. Call the streamer HBO. Yes, people are already subscribed to HBO for fifteen bucks a month. There's a streaming service called HBO. Have HBO make more shows, keep the brand that people know, the thing people care about. They actually
like HBO. It's for adults. It means something to people. It's not TV, it's HBO instead. Now HBO is a vertical underneath this mystery meat thing Max that no one's ever hurt. That's not a brand. That was literally what they called it instead of Plus. They're like, should we call it HBO Plus? No, too small, We'll call it HBO Max. Right, it's extreme HBO. And then like, but then they got rid of the part that people fucking
knew and just called it Max. That's like if Disney Plus just called itself plus, right, people are there for the Disney you're not there for the Plus.
I'm so mouse and then the Max ads. We're all trading on these like icons of film, Like, yeah, the things that like are completely outside of the model that they're trying to force things in the direction.
Or called it fucking Warner Brothers. People know Warner Brothers, call it Warner Max. People love the people. People have been watching Warner Brothers in this country for one hundred years. Like just call it that. But instead, you know, Zoslav treats this company it's like a stock portfolio to him, right, He's like, oh, I put this in, I put that in, I put that and that's my tranch of content. That's
my big batch of content. I don't give a shit what it's called, right, yeah, because his plan is to sell it or whatever he wants to do. He's he's financialized it. But that's not that's not how you build a media brand. And you know, it's it's a shame. Like it often feels stupid to say, why don't these companies like respect these old time values of having like a good media brand that people actually care about. You know, that means something to people, But like I feel stupid
saying that because they don't care. They only care about money. But like they lose money by doing this, you know, like, people, how have we forgotten the lessons of the last hundred years of capitalism? Did these people go to fucking marketing school, Like it's just basic brand shit. Sorry no, but it's true.
I mean it's it's so reactionary, and it's everything about like whatever is good in the short term with no long term thinking. Like everybody's getting into streaming. I guess we're getting into streaming too. Wait what does it take to do that? And now we see like I mean, like with HBO Max, we saw half of the shit that was like interesting to people get absolutely vaporized. Yeah it's hard.
Yeah, all right, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back to talk more about this and AI and we're back and like big, like a movie that comes through and is like a visionary work that like that that's not that interesting to wall Street and to David's aslov because it's not something that you can replicate, and like scale is the word they use, Like yeah, and so they like the HBO of it is not
interesting to him. He wants to create something where he can just churn out shit, which is I think why AI is so interesting to him.
I mean, I think you can scale creativity because all you have to do is cultivate a culture of the most creative people. And have them come in the door and give them, you know, pay them appropriately, give them the right guidance they might need. And a great example of that is HBO. Right, it was a for in its pinnacle period. It was a hit factory, you know. Or you could look at something like Comedy cent right, which in its heyday really dominated comedy in America and
did a good job. Like they would take comics and they would give them an album and then a uh, you know, a half hour, and or they'll give them a spot on TV, then a half hour than an hour, then maybe they get a TV show, you know what I mean. It was like a whole pipeline and it made the comedy better. And they did it by just you know, saying, well, we're gonna we're gonna go find
people right right. But the reason we stopped having that is because I think partially these guys wanted more control because if they were making original ideas, you know, if you look at all the biggest so so many of the movies that we're watching now a reboots of the fertile period where they actually did this right in the eighties or nineties, where stuff like Indiana Jones back to the future the Matrix, like you know these things where
these movies would come out of nowhere. They would be completely original in ways that nobody had ever seen, and they would make a huge amount of money. And then they would you know, inspire other creativity. Right look at look at how the Matrix affected so much else. Right, So, uh, they but they decide they don't want to do that because it gives the creators too much power. Right then you as the executive, you're having to like give all these other people money and do what they say. Right.
Then then George Lucas, right, can become the big the big executive, and you're not, right, You're just the guy who pays George Lucas. And so they don't like that. What they like is IP. The reason they like IP is because they can own it. They don't own you know, Toby Maguire. They don't own who directed the first Spider Man.
What's what Sam Raimi?
Thank you? And he did a great job, right, Sam Raimi was a wonderful director on those movies. They don't own either of those people, but they own Spider Man, and so they can make it that it doesn't matter who's in the suit, right, And Actually, I think that's part of why they ran with the Flash, or they didn't boot Ezra Miller out of there, because who gives a shit. People are just gonna come see the flash, right,
and it's wrong. People don't like it as much. People don't enjoy this content, but that's what they're going with because it gives them the control over the business.
And is that like, and you brought up AI and I'm curious, you know, just from the WGA's perspective, what that intersection is, you know, the existential threat of AI? How much of that is an existential threat because I
think human taste also counts for a lot. Just like you're in your example of Kotaku and like, I'm not really looking for AI generated articles, but can you talk to that sort of what that sort of what what is sort of seen in the horizon for you know, what this how the studios really want to integrate artificial intelligence in terms of like how that could enter the creative process.
So I don't give a shit about the technology, you know, I think the technology is bullshit. I think it's does some interesting things. You know. And by the way, we're talking about different types of technology that are being labeled as AI, which is a marketing term. Right, Like large language models and the ability to create a deep fake of somebody right of a dead actor are both being called AI being called AI. They're not that similar of technologies, right,
but that's what we're calling them. So whatever, I'll say AI, I just want to like point that out for generating AI. Yeah, yeah, sure, but people are saying that, like, oh, generative AI is going to take over and replace everybody, and I don't buy this, Like, large language models are good at one thing, and that thing does not apply to nearly as much stuff as people think that it does, right.
Right, the creating the illusion that the thing you're talking to or the thing that's generating the text is thinking, yeah, that's what it's caught into it. But it's just recombining shit,
which is what the studios identified. Like, That's that's why it makes sense to me that they were so scared of like taking away AI, because they're like, this thing works like us, It's just recombined shit until you get something that kind of looks like the previous thing and is good enough to kind of trick people into buying a ticket.
We often joke that I could replace their jobs more easily than ours. But you know the reality is that this is this technology is nothing like artificial intelligence. Like because every job in television involves talking to other people, right, reading the paper, learning about the world around you, responding to recent events, right, having conversations. None of these are
things that so called AI can do. What a large language model does is you put text in one end, and it gives you text that would plausibly be a response to the first text out the other end. And it does that based on everything else that it's read. Right, that's not intelligence. That's recombining words in an interesting way that in some cases could be useful. Right, But you know it's it's the same as you know you've seen
the now here's the problem. These companies might use this technology to try to undermine our wages and working conditions, and that's what we're trying to get them to stop. So I'll give you an example of this. Writing is much more than outputting text. You'd have to be stupid to think it was. Writing means not just coming up
with an idea, not just writing it down. It means talking to the network guy on the phone and understanding what his needs are taking the note in a way that is smarter than what he could even think of, because that guy's actually kind of dumb, right, But you're like, okay, the note behind the note is the actually wants it like this, So that's what I'll do. Right. Then you go talk to the actor. Oh, the actor doesn't really like their lines that much because you know they're a
little you know, Tom Cruise, a little bit worried. It makes them look kind of wimpy. So we have to adjust that a little bit. We have to like go have drinks with him and then like change the script. Right then, it means talking to the director and like adjusting it to fit his vision. It means understanding how much a particular scene might cost so that you can say, you know what, they're never going to be able to
shoot that. Let me, you know, combine these two scenes and that way it'll be cheaper and the line producer won't yell at me. Right, and then the line producer comes and yells at you anyway, you have changed the scene again, blah blah blah blah. Then you go to set and you watch the actor and you say, oh, you know, the actually this line the way you're saying, it doesn't mean what you think it means, Like, it's gonna be confusing. So could you, like, let's adjust the
line a little bit, you know, et cetera. Doing that on set, then it means going to the edit, going to post production and watching the episode and saying, oh, man, this episode's five minutes too long. We have to cut something. What can we cut without losing anything important? Oh, here's a creative fix. Let's have the actor like say this little line of adr dialogue and it will bring him back in and that'll solve the problem. Right. All of those things are writing. That's what it means to be
a writer in Hollywood. Okay, it's not outputting text. However, the people who run these companies are stupid and ignorant enough to think that all out writing is is outputting text because they never work with us or talk to us. Right. Ted Sarandos has not spoken with a writer in ten years. Right, So they are likely to be sold a bill of goods by some tech company. Some tech company coming to them and saying, hey, guess what we made a super AI. You just input all your old scripts and we'll output
new movies for you. And then you won't need writers anymore. And so what they'll do is they'll say, Okay, here's the really great script that the AI wrote. We just need somebody to punch it up, take our notes, go talk to the actor, go to set, go to post. Oh but none of that's writing. That's just producing. So you're not going to get paid as a writer. You're not a writer, you're a producer. Like no, the human who does all that is still doing all of the writing.
They're just going to take some piece of shit and make it work. But they but they may not be paid as a writer. And that is what we are fighting to prevent now. That's in writing. Actors have different issues where they're worried about their likenesses and that's an immediate threat that could happen with them. The AMPTP literally proposed that for background actors. These are the people who
are in the background of scenes. And it's not a highly paid job, but it is a professional job that people who do it are good at it, and it's something you should be able to earn a living at because it takes a full day, you know, and people do it, you know, every day of the week. It's something that they need to make to make movies and TV.
So the AMPTP, who are negotiating against literally proposed that background actors would be paid one day's wages, they would be scanned in to an AI on their first day, and then the company would then own that likeness in perpetuity and could do whatever they wanted to with it. Now, I want to be really clear, this is not some fancy new technology. This is something they could have done
two years ago. Right. It's just like digital scanning, Like any actor who's worked in a movie on vfxkift digitally scanned. The difference is they want to steal our likenesses right and own them in perpetuity. It's the business practice that's the problem, and that like incense, the sag after negotiating committee, and that's why they're on strike.
Yeah, I mean makes sense. My grandparents were. They they made a living off of background acting, like in the nineties after they were retired, because my uncle was like in the industry and he's like, man, they need to get out of the house, they need something to do, and like I talk about it on the show all the time, they were like playing like the old black couple and like so many movies in nineties, things like Jerry Maguire Deep Impact and things like that, and I
saw firsthand for them like that it gave them all kinds of benefits. And they're not even the people that are like the stars, you know what I mean that there's still a way to even have a living from just being you know, like being available and wanting to participate in these productions. So yet to hear then that they just want to reduce human beings to basically like reusable facial fonts that they can just replicate willy nilly
like is Yeah, it's it's definitely disconcerting. And I think there's similar things even happening with podcasting too, where you hear so much too about being like creating like vocal models to be able to like transpose things into all kinds of different languages or things like that, and then you're like, oh, that's you begin to see the stickiness there.
Yeah, and you can do that now with like one minute's worth of talking, and I think we have given them millions of minutes worth talking, so we're pretty fucked the.
Language that that model better be fucking good based on material.
The idea, but just the fundamental idea that people would listen or watch AI generated content is moronic.
But it will, Like that's the thing with the media, like the online media world, Like it will like they don't give a shit the people who are making it. Like there's this tweet that screencap from Ashley Clark at Underscore ash Underscore Clark, that's just a screen cap of this like outbrain article and it says it's a picture of Vince Vaughan and it says it's no big secret why Van vaught isn't around anymore sponsored van but it's
it's just the AI misfiring. But it's enough to like, you know that that used to Like it's just been a slow degradation as they fucked the people out of creating that sort of content that had any talent or you know, interest in making it good. And that I think, like the union, this strike is what is standing between us and just a world of fucking mediocrity, like just
the studios getting their way. Like so just from the consumer's perspective, like even if you don't understand that, like the you know, labor is incredibly important and increasingly so going forward, Like just from what you're going to be seeing like the movies and TV shows you're going to be streaming, Like this is what is standing between you and a future of like turning on Netflix and seeing like some shit like Van.
Vaught like in Love Is Born, the dating reality show. Huh, like these scripts that make sense, Like that's what the AI did. They know better than us. Yeah, we're not really good with the written word.
Yeah. Yeah, and it's and by the way, it's like it's getting better so fast soon it's gonna be good. I'll believe it when I fucking see it, right, Like they're trying to give you Van Vaught right now. Yeah you know, uh, give me a give me a like miss me with the with the like oh you you have to bow down before AI, because I'm pretty sure it's gonna be great later, like fuck off, Like that's.
Let's preemptively fail like full before it.
Huh really And yeah, to your point, I think we've seen like the degradation happening as it's gone more like I do think there's a huge overlap with what these chat gpt like AI like quote unquote AIS are doing and what like studio executives do with the combination and
recombination of shit. And it's like for the past, we have seen things trend toward mediocrity in the world of movies, and you're just seeing, like, you know, I feel like eventually they could get to a world where an AI chat GPT variety could shit out something similar to like Jurassic World or Star Trek, the Star Trek that was basically like mapping the plot of Star Wars onto Star Trek characters, or you know, the The Lion King live action, And like, these are movies that make money and fool
you enough to buy the ticket, but then like it just doesn't have a cultural imprint. It's like a copy of a copy that just sort of tails off.
And I mean the fact that they even call those Lion King movies live action. They're not live action, their computer animated. You think they got a real lion to talk. It's an animated movie. Yeah, it's animated, just like the last one. What the fuck.
Are they right?
And yes, it's chum right. It's like, hey, we can pay like a bunch of overworked VFX people nothing to turn this shit out rather than make a real movie.
Yeah, but they'll never come up with Jurassic Park. Or you know, the original Star Trek or the original Star Wars, and so this will be what we will have. We'll just have pastiche will have just you know, a flat, flattened out version of mediocrity, and like we will have lost one of the great things that America ever created.
Yeah, and look, that's why I believe the Enderdament industry is one of the great things in America has ever created. It's it's popular art. A lot of it is direk but you know, you watch the reason people love it is they watch it and they go, that's fucking art. It's art to speaks to me, you know what, And it's it's great art. And some of it, you know, films are Film is one of the great American art
forms that we invented here. It's like right fucking next to jazz, right in terms of great American art forms that were invented in America. And the reason we're on strike is not to save the art form. It's not to save movies. We're on strike to save our careers. And it's an economic struggle, but it's it's something we all give a shit about, and it's it's something that I hope we can help reverse.
Yeah, how do you just like in your long view? Right? I mean, like we talked about the up top that you know, there's the more cynical strategy seem to be some studio executors are like, well, let's just see if we can wait them out until they lose their housing. Yeah, you know, what's your long view of how obviously I see how can did the writers are and now actors are to making like ensuring that things are better not just for themselves but for future people that take this path.
But I mean, how are you looking at it? And obviously I can see how energized you are, so I know that, like you, there's optimism, But what is it like from that end to hear the fucking people that you're trying to negotiate and hear such like cynical bullshit like that that they're like, well, we have more money honestly in the end, and we'll just drive them out of dollars maybe as a negotiating time.
Yeah, I mean, it's it's all we did. This one is laugh I mean in deadline, the people for the companies literally said they were gonna starve us out until we lose our homes like right, And it was the dumbest thing to say, because it was like an old playbook where they used to try to like slip stuff into the trades to scare us. You know, that's that's was their playbook was. You know, we'll we'll try to convince the writers to fold because we're gonna last longer
than them. It was tough talk. They didn't realize that they said it on the Internet and that like the whole world could see it and it would result in an out pouring of support because they literally they're they're saying they're gonna put their make they're gonna make their writers homeless, like what the fuck? Right, Like it's reprehensible, It's no one could hear this and be on the side of the person who said that, Like, what the fuck are they talking about? And it's it's evil to
say that. It's on the face of it evil and it's a it's against every American value and so you know, it's it's ludicrous that they said this. Multiple people from multiple streamers and studios said this to a reporter multiple times, like go read the article, he's source a rag. But they do their reporting, you know, so you know, all we can really do is laugh. I mean and also by the way show that they were panicking.
Yeah, yeah, And I think it's kind of everywhere right now. I mean, like this whole moment, it's not just you, it's Ups, it's waffle House, it's Starbucks, it's Amazon. We're really like at this this real inflection point where like the greed and disconnect of like C suites to like actual how like people do a job like is now really bubbling up to the surface. And now like they're kind of confused like wait, wait, oh, it's that bad.
And I hope that this you know that you know, all of you are successful like in this battle, because I think it's it's really important, and I have a feeling that it'll affect a lot of other things happening in the country too.
Look, it's the same battle that everyone in America is facing. Right What's happened to us is over the last twenty years, the companies have figured out how to take the money from our pockets that came from our labor and keep it for themselves. That's it. Yeah, So why is it that in America right now we have a record low on employment rate and people can't afford homes, they can't afford school for the kids, they can't afford medical care. Why is that. It's because the same thing has happened
to everybody. This is what capitalism has done to us all, and so we're fighting back against it, and they're you know, we're going to win, and we're gonna save our industry and we're going to show everyone that this is how you can do it. You can do it with a union. And it's hard to form a union. We're lucky because we already have strong unions, as we have for ninety years.
But why do we have them because workers started them and the conditions in which they started, the conditions in which the Writers Guild was founded ninety years ago were far more inimical than the conditions are today. You know, we had people who writers who never talked to each other it working for these giant companies that you know,
hired and fired them constantly. They had no credit, nobody thought they mattered at all, and they just talked to each other and built a community and started a union. Took them ten years to get the union recognized, took years past that to get a contract. But because they put in that time and effort for years when nobody thought it was possible. All their friends said, you're stupid, they said, is this going to work? I don't feel right.
I don't know. I'm kind of worried, you know, like all that shit happened to them, just like what happened to you if you started a union in your workplace, because they did it. I have a health intention plan, yeah, and one of the best in the country that I'm very proud to have, although I'm going to lose it in a couple of months because I have worked in a little while. So hopefully the strike, when the strike
is over, I'll get it. I'll get a job so I can keep getting that reimbursement for my therapist.
There you go. Well, Adam, thank you so much for taking the time during what I'm assuming it's a crazy busy period. We really appreciate you talking to us and fighting the good fight. Mans.
Keep doing it, guys, It's so wonderful to be here, and thanks for your support. And oh, let me plug by the way. Two things. First of all, I am not working for television and film right now. I got to make a living somehow. I'm on tour as a stand up comic. So if you live in Buffalo, Providence, Rhode Island, Saint Louis, or oh god, what's the last one? Baltimore, please go to Adam Conover dot net. You can find tickets and tour dates there. I've got a brand new
hour stand up. If you want to support the strike, you can donate to the Entertainment Community Fund. This is a fund that gives money to film television workers, you know, writers, actors, crew members, ununionized people who are PAS, people like that who are not able to pay their rent or their medical costs, whether because of the strike or for some
other reason. So if you go to Entertainmentcommunity dot org and click donate to Film and TV Workers, you can, uh, you can directly support not just the strike but all film and TV workers, and and donating money of that does help us stay on the picket line longer. So we we really appreciate.
You amazing, well, thanks so much.
Man, awesome, thank you guys.
All right, that was our conversation with Adam khan Over.
Yeah, he was really going hard on David Aslov.
I know, I didn't like that part, and we were kind of cowards, Loki.
We were kind of cowards from should have pushed back.
Very nice.
Yeah, sorry about that.
I had all these questions about, like if he feels guilty because the billionaire guy who owns Cardier like talked about how he's losing scared, he's scared man like think about his sleep.
But yeah, yeah, it's so again it's we're this is fucking everywhere. I think that's what's really wild is that, Like, it's human beings are just reaching that natural limit where you can only toil for so long and not get what is o to you to just live, to be able to put a roof over your head, eat, support a family, all that. And yeah, I mean I think right now it's it's a huge lot of eyes on them because again, these are probably the most visible union members yeah on the planet.
Yeah, hey man, like I said, it's no big secret why Van Bought isn't around anymore. Oh my god, that's what we're facing. That is what we're facing.
Man.
Wait till people start listening to the Dolly ze get.
That's like I kept thinking about when we were talking. I kept thinking about the sixty minutes thing where Scott Pelly was like and the chet GPT finished Ernest Hemingway's story the like six words baby shoes for sale, never worn, and like added like a parent, a mother and a father character and a third character was like, so it like ruined the fucking thing that you're talking about, but it's just like churned out more and be right pressed by that. Yeah, it added on to it created a
whole baby shoes for Sale universe, shared cinematic universe. Anyways, good conversation. I feel like I know more about AI. I feel like I know more about this moment in the labor struggle.
Yeah, just yeah, one dimension of a very large one. Yeah, across the fucking world basically, And yeah, make sure you guys check. We will have in the foot and oaks. You know, Adam's tour dates and stuff like that, so be sure to catch him on the road because he's it's actually it's actually really funny.
Turns out is actually really funny.
God damn all right, people find you at Miles of Gray wherever they got at symbols, I'm there. And then also, thank you to everybody who started listening and subscribing to The Good Thief the new podcast. Please continue to subscribe. I've been listening and reviewing all that. Episode two comes out tomorrow Wednesday, where we go even deeper into the mystery that is Vasili's Body of Ghostash and also I'll just check out Mad.
Boosties worth the price of admission. But here, dude, it's so good.
I can't I'm actually like, I like, I know, I recorded it. I was like hosting stuff like that, but hearing it all come together, I'm so blown away what they did. The kaleidoscope shout out man, guess, shout out Oz and everybody over there. Yeah. Yeah, like it moves like a movie baby, so easy to listen to. It's like a good gateway pod if you want people to dip their toe. So anyway, I'm done. Two in my horn.
Yep that toe. You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore. O'Brien. That's gonna do it for us today. Yeah, daily's like as a production by Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the Heart Radio Wrap Apple podcast wherever you listen to your favorite shows. All right, that's gonna do it for us this morning, back this afternoon to tell you what's trending. We talk to you all day.
Bye bye bye